


about him

by gingerbread man (xphantomhive)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Death, Fluff, M/M, Memories, Mentions of Cancer, Nightmares, Post-Scratch, Tattoos, but i digress, more like very brief mention of cancer, so don't let it deter you, the underage is very brief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-18
Updated: 2016-03-18
Packaged: 2018-05-27 09:36:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6279253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xphantomhive/pseuds/gingerbread%20man
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>i dunno, jane, there’s a boy and his name is dave strider. i think i might have loved him?</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	about him

You start remembering when you turn thirteen.

Your sister, Jane, sends you a present in the mail for your birthday. She’s stuck in Japan in some pretentious boarding school with a name you can’t even pronounce, but you know she’s there to become a “proper lady.” Which, in translation of your mother’s mind, is, “to become whatever my warped image of perfection is, because in my eyes my kids are never good enough.” The box is sitting on top of the mailbox instead of on the front porch and you can’t help but grin at the mailman’s great sense of humor - he pulls pranks on your mom sometimes, like hiding her Very Important Mail (beauty catalogues) under the giant vases at your front door or shoving her letters so far back into the mailbox that she can’t reach them.

Since you don’t feel like going back inside (all you’ll be greeted by is a cold living room and maybe a maid) and it’s nice outside, you plop down right next to the mailbox and start tearing your gift open. It’s in a red box, and something in the back of your mind tells you that it’s going to be a bunny. You aren’t sure why, so you try to shut that part of your mind off temporarily.

There’s a pound of tissue paper in the box once you’ve finally gotten it open, and the part of your mind you’re trying to block out is screaming ‘wrong, wrong, this is wrong’ but you keep pretending it doesn’t exist because there’s nothing that  _ could  _ be wrong. Once you’ve pulled all of the tissue paper out and it’s surrounding you, some of it flying away in the wind, you’re met by nothing but an envelope with your name on it in Jane’s loopy handwriting. You really hope it isn’t, like, a savings bond or anything. You hate getting those. You really need your sister to come through for you.

You rip the envelope open and out of it falls three things: a piece of paper, a plane ticket, and a movie ticket to an exclusive showing of the new movie  _ Con Air.  _ You’re positively beaming as you unfold the piece of paper, about 99.9% sure that it’s a letter from Jane. Once you have it opened and the first thing you read is, “Dear John” (it’s in annoying sky blue gel pen) your smile grows bigger, if that’s even possible by this point.

The letter is pretty short. Jane tells you she’s already breaking curfew to write it, sitting on the roof of the school with her new friend, Roxy, as lookout. She goes on from there to explain to you about how pretty Roxy is, and how she think she might love her, and your smile still stays. Then she tells you that she managed to score you a ticket to the first, midnight screening of  _ Con Air _ \- the only problem is, it’s in Texas, so she got you a plane ticket there, too.

She ends the letter with a cursive, “Love you!” and a sky-blue gel pen heart from her, as well as a blindingly pink gel pain heart from her new friend Roxy. You fold the letter up and stuff it back into the envelope, but keep the plane ticket and movie ticket in your hand. You couldn’t be more excited. You’re already planning out in your head how you’re going to sneak out of the house and bribe the driver to take you to the airport, but it doesn’t take long before your train of thought is somewhere else; it’s onto how all of this feels so  _ wrong. _

Because, in that box, there should’ve been a bunny, and the bunny should’ve been from  _ Con Air _ , and it should’ve been sent to you by a boy from Texas.

You shake your head and try to clear the thoughts, but to no avail. All you can think about is a blonde boy in Texas, with blonde hair and shades that take up an ungodly amount of his face, sitting behind a computer and mashing a key down on his keyboard that lets him keep upping his bid for a dirty, shitty bunny from the movie  _ Con Air.  _ That didn’t even come out yet. That you’ve never seen. That might not even have a bunny in it. Are you going crazy?

Something tells you that the boy’s name is Dave, and after that, you dream about him a lot. You dream about him kissing you and loving you but also about him dying, he dies so many times, he dies  _ too many times _ , and there’s  _ so much blood and god you couldn’t save him you couldn’t save him but you tried you tried you tried you just want him back he’s yours doesn’t the game get that why can’t it understand that dave strider is yours _

and you wake up in a cold sweat.

There’s a clock ticking, but your mom doesn’t own any analog clocks, because once digital clocks became a “thing” she sold all of the analog ones in the house and replaced them with digital ones, and you haven’t heard the sound of a ticking clock in years. You try to cover your ears but it only gets louder, and you realize it’s in your head, and you want it to stop, but it won’t.

The ticking starts to sound like rapping, and then it sounds more like, “I love you, John.”

You burn the plane ticket to Texas and the ticket to the early showing of  _ Con Air _ , and then you write an apology letter to Jane. You try to explain your dreams to her, but it’s too hard, it’s too hard to explain in a way she’d understand, so the only thing you can do is write,  _ i dunno, jane, there’s a boy and his name is dave strider. i think i might have loved him? _

When you turn sixteen, your mom kicks you out, and you try not to cry.

You remember names, like Dave Strider and Jade Harley and Rose Lalonde and Vriska Serket and Karkat Vantas, and she tells you that you’re going crazy and it’s bad for her image so you’re going to need to leave. She packs you a bag and shoves it against your chest, then she pushes you into the pouring rain and you walk with your head hung low, wet clothes weighing you down, and a soaking wet suitcase in your hands.

You're John Crocker, you're a kid, and you don’t have any money for a house or for food so you sit under a bridge for three days before a girl (or should you say woman) approaches you. She has neat blonde hair trimmed into a bob and violet eyes that almost tear your soul apart. She kneels by you and you flinch away from her. “Hey, it’s alright, I won’t hurt you,” she assures in a soft voice, so much like a voice you knew before, a voice you knew a long time ago, a voice that was one of your best friends. “Are you alright? How long has it been since you last ate anything? Have you a home?”

You shake your head no. It’s your answer to all of the questions. You don’t think she’ll understand, but she does, and she helps you up from the ground and you sling your arm around her shoulders and try not to cry. She holds you up with one arm and carries your suitcase with the other, and you hope she’s taking you back to her house, hope she’s taking you to live with her, hope she’s going to feed you and let you use her shower and love you like your own mother never did. You’re whispering, “Thank you, Rose, thank you,” before you can even stop it, and she tenses.

“I suppose not everyone’s lost their memories, fully,” she says quietly, like if she says it quietly you won’t hear it, but you still do.

She does take you back to her house, and she does let you use her shower, and you know you just met her but you walk into her living room in nothing but a pair of blue boxers, the only piece of clothing in your suitcase that could be salvaged. “What on earth are those?” She asks when her eyes land on your tattoos, and you blush. You’d almost forgotten that you started getting tattoos when you were fifteen, because you wanted to remember, you couldn’t let yourself forget.

You’re covered in them. From head to toe. Split between your two legs are the twelve zodiac signs; there are six on your left, and six on your right. You have a weirdly shaped sun on your right bicep with the letters “TT” under it, and a really weird symbol you can’t even explain on your left bicep with the letters “GG” under it. “My, tattoos,” you stutter out. “The one on my back is the biggest one. Do you...would you, maybe. Want to see it?”

She nods, and her fingers are already brushing the tattoo on your right bicep, and you take that moment to acknowledge that she’s at least nine inches taller than you. You aren’t sure if it’s because you’re short, or because she’s tall. Maybe it’s both. You turn and let her see the tattoo on your back, and she breathes out a, “wow,” but you aren’t surprised.

It’s the first one you got. It’s the biggest one you have. Right in the middle of your back is a red gear, and under it are the letters “TG” - she traces her fingertips over them, first. “How old are you, John? Sixteen? Seventeen, perhaps? I can’t foresee myself giving you an age much older than seventeen.”

You don’t think you ever told her your name.

“I’m sixteen,” you respond. “My mom kicked me out a few days ago.”

She hums. It’s a comforting noise. You feel like you’ve heard it before. “Would you like to meet my brother Dave?”

You nod and try to figure out why it feels like there are a million rocks settling in your stomach.

Rose Lalonde, as you learn her name is, lets you live with her. She’s a famous author and she lives in a huge mansion, all by herself, because her daughter Roxy is off at boarding school that she convinced Rose that she needed to go to because she had a “hunch” that she’d find something there she needed - and Rose let her. So you take Roxy’s bedroom, even though it’s pink and there’s wizard porn scattered everywhere.

Rose’s brother is named Dave Strider. He comes over for dinner every Tuesday, and you start to like him more and more, because he reminds you of someone you knew once. He’s a movie director, and Rose lets you stay over at his house on the weekends after a few months. He has jars of dead things and an unused set of turntables, and when you brush your fingertips over them and just  _ marvel  _ there’s such a look of adoration in his red eyes that it hurts.

“Rose says you have some pretty kickass tattoos,” he says one night over dinner, like talking about your tattoos is casual conversation. “Mind if I take a look?”

You’re already standing up and taking your clothes off, and he’s raising his hands at you, the universal sign of, ‘woah, okay, more than i bargained for here.’ “Kid, what the hell are you doin’?”

“Showing you my tattoos, dummy,” you say, tugging your pants down and folding them. You’re now standing at the head of his table, a half-eaten plate of spaghetti in front of you, in nothing but a pair of  _ Ghostbusters  _ boxers. You grin when he gives a half-smile at your tattoos. “But wait! I have this sickass one on my back, you  _ gotta  _ see it!”

You spin to show him the one on your back, and you can  _ hear  _ his breath hitch. “Isn’t it cool?” You ask, going full kid-on-Christmas mode. Then you feel his fingertips, just a light brush, but it sends a shiver up your spine nonetheless. He’s tracing over the edges of the gear, tracing over the T and the G, and you think he might be trying to remember, like you were. Like you are.

“Yeah, it’s real cool, Crocker,” he says, and then he turns you to face him and his lips are on yours and it’s  _ wrong. _ He’s got to be pushing thirty, and you’re only sixteen, you aren’t even legal, but you don’t push him away. You know you should, you know Jane would tell you to, but you aren’t very sure if Rose would tell you to. She’s always very odd when she talks about your relationship with Dave, almost like she  _ expects  _ it to end up romantic. He pulls back first. “Nice deer in headlights look, kid. Really suits you. ‘Specially with them baby blues.”

“That was really illegal!” is the first thing you shout, and he raises an eyebrow. You mentally facepalm yourself - that was definitely  _ not  _ the right thing to blurt. “But it’s. That. This, it’s okay, I’m okay with it. I love you, okay? And I think um. The tattoo on my back is about you.”

He nods. “Me too, kid. Me too.”

;;

Dave dies on his fiftieth birthday of cancer that neither you nor Rose knew about. You both bring him red flowers, and you get a tattoo of a scratched record on the back of your neck.

It’s about him.

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote a lot today. if you read everything i've posted today, kudos to you for making it through that much of my (awful) fanfiction, my friend.
> 
> i'll be posting one final thing tonight, and then i'm checking out fanfiction-wise for a day or two. not very long, though. school isn't too trying currently.


End file.
